The use of tubes made from a textile material to protect electrical cables, fluid ducting and gas pipes in aggressive areas as a result of vibrations, rubbing, significant temperature changes, impacts, the presence of dirt etc. is known and very widely used moreover in the electronic, aerospace, automobile and railway equipment industries. In addition said tubes are also used to provide sound insulation and RFI/EMI radiation screening.
The tubes described in the above paragraph and in particular tubes with a shaped longitudinal opening from flat bands, likewise the processes to obtain them are described in several patents such as: EP-A-1 236 822 (belonging to the same owner as the present application), U.S. Pat. No. 4,784,886 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,556,495.
All of these types of protective tube known up to the present time have the problem that, even though they have a high closing strength when they are made from flat bands, their flexibility and bendability are reduced in such a way that when they are applied on a bunch of cables or ducting in a straight or stretched position they do not have problems but when the element that must be covered is bent or must be bent after locating the protective tube there are difficulties in use due to the tube not being able to adapt to the shape of the substrate, thus opening up along the longitudinal cut, or making them take on a certain rigidity.
In U.S. 2003/0089971 a protective tube is described with similar characteristics to that which is obtained in the process described in the present invention but the process to obtain it is different and much more complicated. Specifically three possible methods are described to obtain a corrugated fabric tube with a peak and trough profile.                By using monofilament yarns and multifilament yarns in a combined manner.        By placing some rigid monofilament yarn rings on a fabric base structure made up of more flexible yarns.        By the combination of zones on the fabric with a greater density of stitch courses with a lesser density of stitch courses.        